🚨Wanted: Tips for Raising Hormonal Bad Boys

[Kiki]

What can one do to help prevent the hormonal boys from beating up the girls in the flock?

Pretend you have a new flock... all the birds are the same age.

All of a sudden a couple of the males decided to start beating up a girl or two.

How do I stop them from continuing to beat her/them up?

 

[room onthebroom]

So the boys are just beating up the one girl. They seem to get along with everyone else for now.

Does the one girl stay confined or do they need to remove one of the mean boys?




There is no right way or one answer. I know.

We just need ideas on things to try to keep the peace for a little when longer.

I wouldn’t isolate her unless she’s bloody. I might isolate the roosters.

 

[Rhodebar Lover]

I wouldn’t isolate her unless she’s bloody. I might isolate the roosters.

Agreed!! This is a problem with the roosters. Separate whoever is going to be rehomed. Don't remove the poor hen and mess up the pecking order further and have her become more stressed upon reintroduction

 

[Kiki]

I wouldn’t isolate her unless she’s bloody. I might isolate the roosters.

She was bloody. She's purple now.

 

[Kiki]

Then I don't see the need to make a thread that says to try and find solutions and mislead people like me who are not interested in cockerel stew . Thanks for the prompt reply though!

Calm down...you may learn something useful here. If you learn nothing else you'll learn that not everyone has the same point of view.

 

[room onthebroom]

The owner does not

It’s not Kiki’s chickies who are having problems

IKR. She doesn’t have roosters & if she did they wouldn’t dare be so disrespectful.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Kiki this is kind of disjointed. Let me try to put together what I think is pertinent information.

You said hormonal, which means immature adolescent cockerels. You confirmed that later on.

I saw 9 cockerels but don't know how many pullets. I don't believe that strongly
in ratios anyway. I often have more boys than girls and no problems. I occasionally have more girls than boys and can have issues.

It appears to be one pullet that is the problem. The other pullets are having no problems. I don't see that as a ratio thing for sure.

Your goal is to keep all the boys alive until they get older. Not totally sure what is going on with that. Killing or getting rid of all or some of the boys doesn't seem a good way to meet this goal.

I'm still not totally sure I understand what is going on or the ultimate goal. Please correct me where I'm wrong.

To me this is not a flockwide problem, it is an individual problem and the individual is the one girl having a rough time. I don't like to treat an individual problem by treating the whole flock. I try to solve for the peace of the flock. If I had a pullet being this disruptive I'd probably eat her, but I don't see that as a desired outcome for you.

My first thought is to create a bachelor's pad. Separate all of the boys. This is not to keep the boys from fighting over the girls as is usual for a bachelor pad but just to isolate the one girl from the boys. Leave her with all the girls and see how she gets along. There is some reason the boys are picking on her and her alone. See if the other girls pick on her. There may be something wrong with that pullet. Or she may be trying to be dominant herself and the boys are having none of that.

Try to isolate the girl with two or three buddies to make reintegration easier. If you house them across wire while separated reintegration should not be that hard.

That's all I can come up with to meet the goals as I see them.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

What if this pullet, that was being targeted, turned out to be a male!


Does he, the picked on one, get a free pass to stay for good now?

I wouldn't say so.

i've seen (haven't encountered it personally apart from once and it was quite delayed, so unsure what happened there) where people have 2 [or 3 or 4 or 5] males, including a very submissive male that is treated poorly by the others. They cull the assertive ones, keep the submissive one, and the power goes to his head and he becomes quite aggressive.

I'm sure it isn't always that way, but I do know it has happened

 

[R2elk]

So the boys are just beating up the one girl. They seem to get along with everyone else for now.

Does the one girl stay confined or do they need to remove one of the mean boys?




There is no right way or one answer. I know.

We just need ideas on things to try to keep the peace for a little while longer.

If the Ghost isn't ready to choose which cockerel gets to live, all the cockerels need to be separated from all of the pullets.

 

[EverythingDucks]

I'm currently trying to rehome four of the cockerels. No luck yet.

As for the bullied cockerel, he is a Polish and his head feathers haven't been able to fully come in due to being picked on in the brooder.
At first it was not just the other cockerels who were picking on him. Which ever ones saw the blood from his feathers breaking would pick on him. So he was removed from the coop (long story) for about two days. I was hoping it hadn't been too long and set him in the coop while I was adding bedding to the box I was keeping him in, and two of the other cockerels immediately went after him. This was at night when they were all on the roosting bars.

This was obviously not a smart decision on my part, which I realized right away. I'm not sure I would consider this all to be aggression from the cockerels. It seems to me like they were just picking on him because of the bald spot and only attacked when I set him back in after being separated for a few days.

Aside from the situation with the polish (who is now in a dog kennel in the coop) the cockerels are getting along fine. The few times they've bothered eachother another cockerel broke it up.
Though I do have way too many at the moment and one of them likes to bite so I will be rehoming all but three.
I'm trying to figure out how to deal with them until they're gone if they do cause any problems.